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Digi Tries To Cook, Pt. 3

In the process of thumbing through the cook book for the first time, I pretty much found myself checking out any recipe with “mushroom” in the title. I’m not sure why, but I seem to be on a shroom kick. Mushrooms and onions are basically my jam. So the first recipe I picked out was this mushroom rice bake, which I was hesitant to prepare because it makes eight servings, and I only expected three people to eat it.

I didn’t manage to get any process pics for this one. It involved beating an egg and some cream cheese together, then adding in a can of evaporated milk, then some separately-cooked onions and mushrooms, and three cups of cooked rice. I was glad that I asked my mom to assist by making the rice on this one, as she astutely recognized that “3 cups of cooked rice” does not require cooking “3 cups of rice,” as I would have done. We cooked about a cup and a half of rice, and we had too much rice.

While the taste of this thing was maybe just a little bland, and I maybe could’ve added more mushrooms, I actually legitimately enjoyed this dish. It’s the first thing I’ve made that I went back for seconds and thirds on, and even Vic went back for seconds as well. It was good enough for me to not go out to lunch later (ate it pretty early). I did end up with a bit of a stomachache as, once again, there is such thing as too much mushroom (and probably too much evaporated milk), but still, I would consider this to be the first unqualified success of my cooking career.

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Next up for dinner again, we’re making a pesto spaghetti. Really all this means is making pesto, and making spaghetti, and then tossing them together. I didn’t remember to take a pic of the ingredients for this one either, but as I understand it, pesto is a pretty specific recipe, so you could probably just google it and find the exact ingredients.

It didn’t look like quite enough pesto, and it didn’t taste like it either. I think the spaghetti would’ve been better off drowned in the stuff, cause it was just a tad too dry/bland. The chicken cooked with it was not my idea/fault. I had 3 chicken dinner plans, and my dad didn’t really buy chicken based around them. He picked out this seasoned chicken just for the sake of baking, but didn’t end up being home to eat it. As is usually the case with pre-seasoned chicken, it didn’t have nearly enough seasoning to really make a difference and was a bit bland, though at least it wasn’t too dry. Overall, this was a serviceable dinner and not too far off from what I’m used to from our family, but if I’m trying to learn to cook then this is the standard I’m meant to be exceeding.

Essentially season some raw chicken breasts (I rub on some garlic and onion powder as well), coat with flour, fry them on a pan, make a sauce out of the gristle with capers/lemon juice/chicken broth or whatever your recipe calls for, serve over spaghetti. Pair with a salad or steam some broccoli at the same time.

Really the only concerns as a newbie is making sure the chicken isn’t undercooked and that the sauce is the perfect amount of salty/sour.